Tag: Positivism

David Stove and the Plato cult

David Stove’s book The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies is a remarkable collection of essays. As a staunch positivist ,the author is not impressed with most of what constitutes “philosophy” (or the quality of our thinking in general). As Stove laments in the preface, “there is something fearfully wrong with typical philosophical theories.” But unlike the early 20th century logical positivists, Stove has little hope for formulating a criterion that shows why the opinions of most philosophers are nonsense and completely devoid of common sense. As a consequence, Stove is forced to look for alternative  strategies to explain the “exceedingly strange” views of prominent philosophers.  Most of the essays in Stove’s book are informed by a perspective that investigates non-rational causes that could throw some light on the matter.

For example, the thoughts of Karl Popper, who Stove holds responsible for facilitating an era of irrationalism in the philosophy of science, are explained by the spirit of the “Jazz Age” (anything goes) that is expressed in Popper’s philosophy.   Stove’s case is not  all that persuasive. The most obvious line of criticism is that it is highly implausible to attribute the spirit of the Jazz Age to a grumpy, intolerant person like Karl Popper. If anything, in light of Popper’s personality traits, the anti-authoritarian aspirations  in his writings are actually quite remarkable.  Stove missed the most obvious personal explanation available to him; Popper’s obsession to refute the logical positivists. One would look in vain in Popper’s writings for a celebration of the Jazz Age but it is not hard to detect Popper’s compulsive need to establish his place in the history of thought.  Obviously, this cannot be done through incremental refinements of the theories of previous philosophers; it requires a new way of looking at things (falsificationism).  If Stove would have argued that lifting concepts from the political realm and using them in epistemology is the road to confusion and leads inevitably to the epistemological anarchism of Paul Feyerabend and the vacuous “pancritical rationalism” of William Bartley, he might have been on firmer ground.  Instead, Stove argues that the main emotional impulse of Popper was ultimately what he calls “horror victorianorum,” the  irrational distaste for, or condemnation of, Victorian culture, art and design. As a self-proclaimed conservative, one would expect Stove to launch a strong defense of the politics and culture of late Victorian England but, oddly enough, Stove seems to have considerable sympathy for horror victorianorum and it is only the rational side in him that forces him to admit that this emotional response has little intellectual merit.

The other essays in The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies are similar cases studies of philosophers with crazy ideas including a scathing review of Nozick’s attempt to engage in “non-coercive” philosophy. Of most interest is the final chapter called “What is Wrong with Our Thoughts? A Neo-Positivist Credo.” It is in this essay where the strict positivist outlook of Stove finds its most forceful expression. Stove cites a number of passages of the works of Plotinus, Hegel and Foucault and cannot explain how (supposedly) intelligent people can express such madness. What characteristics do all these ideas have in common? Stove has considerable sympathy for the logical positivist project to find criteria to eliminate metaphysics and nonsense from philosophy but does not believe that finding such criteria will be comprehensive enough. He refers to Tolstoy who said that all happy families are the same while every unhappy family is unhappy in a different way.  There are endless ways in which human thinking can go wrong. In the end Stove is pessimistic about the prospect for rational thought: “genetic engineering aside, given a large aggregation of human beings, and a long time, you cannot reasonably expect rational thought to win.”

Stove may be correct about the ultimate fate of the human race, but he may be too pessimistic about developing criteria that discipline thinking. The mistake of some of the early logical positivist may not have been so much in looking for such criteria but insufficient recognition of the fact that such criteria need a context to be useful. Instead of saying that the statements of, let’s say, Hegel or Heidegger, or not meaningful (period) it would be better to say that such statements are not meaningful in the context of action or prediction. As Hans Reichenbach writes in his logical empiricist masterpiece “Experience and Prediction:”

It seems to me that the psychological motives which led positivists to their theory of meaning are to be sought in the connection between meaning and action and that it was the postulate of utilizability which always stood behind the positivistic theory of meaning, as well as behind the pragmatic theory, where indeed it was explicitly stated.

From this perspective, critiques concerning the self-applicability of the logical positivist criterion of meaningfulness can be avoided by linking cognitive significance to action (including such endeavors as experimental science) in a way that itself can be subjected to logical or empirical investigation. In essence, this “pragmatic” element would introduce a more thoroughgoing empiricism. Logical positivists like Carnap were not hostile to this idea as evidenced by his ongoing efforts to refine his criteria so as not to exclude the achievements of modern science.  Broadly speaking, we look at successful scientific efforts (which basically comprise all sciences that can be reduced to physics and mathematics) and “reverse-engineer” our criteria around this.  Such efforts may produce new roadblocks but there is a good chance that the resulting criteria will eliminate of lot of the madness that Stove finds in most philosophers, intellectuals, and public policy makers.

Political classification and economic reductionism

At Taki’s Magazine E. Christian Kopf writes:

As conservatives and right-wingers like Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Whittaker Chambers and many others have pointed out for over a century, free marketeers (19th century liberals or modern libertarians) differ from Marxists and democratic socialists (20th century liberals) only superficially, while sharing fundamental traits that range from a commitment to economic reductionism (what Albert Jay Nock and Wilhelm Röpke called “economism”) to a pervasive obsession with globalism. Gutzman is right about himself and his fellow libertarians.  They are left-wingers and do not differ in fundamentals from other left-wingers.

There are number of problems with this statement.  First of all, what constitutes a “superficial” or “fundamental” trait is arbitrary. For any two schools of political thought one can find similarities that can be designated as fundamental and differences that can be designated as superficial. For example, one could just as well argue that the policy differences between liberals and traditionalists are superficial and their shared tendency to believe in the existence of non-material justifications for political authority (“human rights”, “religion”) are fundamental.  From this perspective, the real dichotomy is between positivist and superstitious political thought.

Secondly, “economic reductionism” is not a normative political view but an approach to study human interaction. Economic reductionism, and its practical application “rational choice,” may yield new knowledge or not, but it cannot be dismissed for political reasons. Despite its limitations, the economic rationality postulate has a number of advantages over its competitors. As the self-designated “conservative anarchist” Anthony de Jasay writes in his piece ‘Rational Choice in Conflict’:

…the “economic approach” really reduces to the consistent application of a workmanlike rationality postulate. It is an approach that recommends itself, not because it can conquer all, but because without the postulate, deductive reasoning about human behavior is not possible; instead “anything goes,” any retrospective explanation is as good as any other, and no discipline can be imposed to curb prattle and mumbo-jumbo. In fact…reference to rationality is required even for the concept of irrational action to have meaning. The achievement of the postulate is not so much in the new knowledge it is producing in fields to which it is a relative newcomer–notably sociology, political theory, law, and perhaps history too, though the last is a moot point–but in blowing away the vari-colored fogbanks of historicism, institutionalism, behaviorism, structuralism, functionalism, dialectical materialism, and the rest.

It may be true that the differences between classical and modern liberalism are trivial but, as argued here, this perspective does not take into account that the case for libertarianism can be argued on completely different Hobbesian, “mechanistic” grounds.  Would this kind of liberalism still be “fundamentally” the same as Lockean rights-based liberalism, or would this present a major departure from the liberal tradition?  Similarly, if traditionalist/ reactionary conclusions are reached using a strictly “materialist” outlook, would this be considered a “right wing” view?

As should be evident from these thought experiments, there is some merit to the view that there are serious limitations to the left-right dichotomy. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether political views are consistent with empirical observation and/or reflect coherent reasoning. No amount of (re)classification of political views  or “essentialist” searching for the “true” meaning of a word can substitute for this.